On Saturday morning, a little over a week after the Paris attacks and the first day of the Brussels lockdown, we discuss survival strategies over our first cup of tea of the day.
“I’d play dead,” I tell my husband Joe. I would try to hide under a body, I think to myself, but don’t say it out loud because I’m ashamed. Then I think there’s no shame in wanting desperately to live, so I do say it.
In Ukraine, when he was 10 months old, my grandfather survived a pogrom when his mother buried him in a haystack. She buried herself too, and lay on top of him. When the mob came, they stabbed the hay with rakes, piercing my great-grandmother’s flesh. Nine bodies were carried out of the house that day, but my grandfather survived.
I want to survive too.
A year ago, we had a similar conversation as we watched a hostage crisis unfold in Sydney, Australia, our hometown. In December 2014, a lone gunman, claiming affiliation with ISIL, took 18 people hostage at the Lindt Café in the central business district. Two victims and the gunman were killed.
At the time, we were in the midst of planning our move to Brussels. Born in Ukraine, I had dreams of covering politics on the Continent. Joe, part-Greek, part-Polish, part-Irish, wanted to spend time in the heart of Europe.
My sister begged us not to go. My mom reminded me of the May 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, which killed four.
But on December 14, 2014, Australians realized our southern land was no longer immune to the threat of terror either. “If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere,” my mom said, resigned.
I arrived in Brussels in February, a month and a half after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France.
Now, nine months later, on a cold, damp Saturday, with terrorists at our doorstep (or so says the media), we think about staying inside. We could pretend it’s the weather, not the fear, keeping us at home. But our fridge is empty and there’s no bread.
The Lebanese bakery on the corner is uncharacteristically shut.
“Do you think it’s the terrorism?” I ask Joe. “Or are they always closed on Saturdays?” He doesn’t know.
We decide to take the tram to a Portuguese bakery and café a few stops away. I wonder aloud why the trams are running when the metro isn’t. It seems more slowdown than lockdown.
“Trams aren’t as densely packed,” Joe says, tactical as ever. “Maybe you’d kill a few people, but it wouldn’t make that big an impact. Plus you could shoot a terrorist through a tram window, but once they’re on the metro…,” he trails off.
We board the tram and I get the window seat, as usual. “Want to swap?” I say, only half joking. Joe laughs. I spend the next 10 minutes looking intently out the window, scanning the faces of those getting on, suspicious of puffy coats and backpacks. I’m wearing a puffy coat, and the trolley we brought for our grocery shopping sits in the aisle beside us. Does everyone else think we’re terrorists, too?
The café is packed. We nab a table at the very back, and I’m relieved, because we’re well away from the big windows. I tell Joe I think we got lucky, but he shakes his head.
“It’s great if they’re just doing a drive-by. But if they come in, we’re like fish in a barrel.”
Over Portuguese tarts and coffee, I tell Joe I’m planning on learning a verse from the Koran so I can recite it, just in case.
“You think that would work?” he asks, skeptical.
The terrorists in Mali asked their hostages to recite verses of the Koran, I remind him.
“Well I’m not going to do that,” he says. I tell him he would, if he was smart, but then I drop it.
We’re waiting at the tram stop on the way to the shops when it starts to snow. Not proper, flaky, beautiful snow, but wet, icy, heavy sludge. It’s freezing. The tram is due in two minutes, then four, then 14. It doesn’t come. People crowd around the stop, shivering — two dozen, maybe more. We’re like sitting ducks, I think.
We start to walk.
“The Delhaize or the Okay?” Joe asks.
It’s a tough decision. The Delhaize supermarket is on the way home, it’s bright and cheery. But it will be packed with people. We’re supposed to avoid large gatherings, shopping precincts. The Okay is dark and dreary, tucked in the middle of a residential area. I hate the Okay, but so would the terrorists, I think.
“The Delhaize,” I say, hoping Joe overrules me. He doesn’t.
As we walk up and down the aisles, packing our trolley with more food than we would normally buy in a single shop, I get a flashback to the shaky mobile phone footage from the Westgate shopping mall terror attack in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2013.
“Supermarkets are the perfect target,” I say, as I check a carton of eggs to make sure none are broken. “There’s only one entrance, you put someone on the door, and then you go aisle-by-aisle. There’s nowhere to hide.”
When we get home, I relax.
That evening, a Belgian friend is hosting her birthday party at her house. The Facebook invitation, sent before Paris, suggests those with the stamina can party on afterwards in the city. There’s a spate of last-minute messages from friends who can’t make it because the metro isn’t running.
About 20 of us gather over quiche and homemade pizza. Some couples have brought their young children. We sing joyeux anniversaire. As we eat cake, I tell the birthday girl my theory about supermarkets. Not for the first time that day, I start my sentence by saying: “If I were a terrorist…” I’m bumming her out, but I can’t help it. What else is there to talk about?
On Sunday, I wake to a frantic email from my sister.
“Totally freaking out. Are you guys ok? Are you going to work? Can you just come home?”
I open Twitter. A message from a friend in Australia: “I am worried about you.”
The Australian media is having a field day. Stories about the Brussels lockdown pepper the front page of my favorite Sydney daily.
In Brussels, not much has changed.
I wish Joe a happy anniversary — one year: paper. We ponder our options for dinner. I think about tweeting a request for suggestions, but I know that’s stupid. Terrorists use Twitter too. I tweet anyway.
We drive to a little Belgian joint in the suburbs, a good 30 minutes away. We tell ourselves it’s because the parking will be convenient. The restaurant is dark. We get a lovely table right by the window. I take the seat with a view of the door.
On Monday, the metro is still closed.
I consider walking to work. It’s an easy 30-minute stroll. I could stop for a coffee, make a morning of it. But I’d be walking past the EU Council and Commission, and I feel queasy at the thought.
“Could Uber drivers be terrorists?” I ask Joe, almost joking.
He thinks for a moment.
“Could be,” he says. The app tells me my driver M’amoud will arrive in six minutes. “But he doesn’t look like a terrorist.”
On my way in, I ponder canceling my meetings. Two of them are at my usual café, Elvis. I used to love it because it has floor-to-ceiling windows and it’s halfway between my office and the Parliament. Today, I hate it. I don’t cancel.
I have an appointment at the U.S. embassy today. I’m almost certain it will be nixed, but to my surprise an email confirms it will go ahead. It’s business as usual for the most part, I’m told.
As the day wears on, my inbox fills with obituaries for canceled events. Thursday’s winter drinks at a law firm will be rescheduled to January, when people are in a more festive mood. Next Monday’s data protection conference won’t be held at all, and refunds will be issued soon. A POLITICO event I’m supposed to moderate is postponed.
In the kitchen, in the hallways, eyes meet, we shake our heads. “It’s crazy,” I say, over and over again. “This is just insane.”
At 4 p.m., Elvis is shut for the day. I can’t remember if that’s earlier than usual. We walk to three other cafes in the area, all closed. Is that normal?
By the time I head out of the office it’s 8 p.m., cold, dark and blustery. There are no Ubers. Taxis whoosh by, full. One finally pulls over, but the driver tells me he is only taking fares to the airport.
I walk home.
The streets seem darker than usual. Are the streetlights dimmer, I wonder, so the terrorists can’t see potential victims?
I don’t listen to music. I want to hear what’s going on around me, and anyway, I don’t really feel like it.
The metro doesn’t run on Tuesday either. I order an Uber. I go to my meetings. In the evening, I put on my headphones and walk home in the rain.
On Wednesday, the terror alert is still at maximum level, but the metro is back. At the station, a jaunty, Arabic tune plays over the sound system. When the train pulls up I see two soldiers, faces covered with ski masks, machine guns at the ready.
Later that morning, I walk along Rue de la Loi, the avenue that cuts through the center of the European district. I barely register the sound of sirens until, suddenly, it jolts me to attention. I watch, stunned, as armored truck after armored truck drive down the avenue, guns mounted on roofs: a cavalcade. I shoot a minute of video, then run back to the office. Journalists and editors crowd around, watching the display.
“Where are they going?” everyone wants to know.
“To Germany?” I joke.
Nobody laughs.